Concordia Lutheran's Emily Brooks and Arlington Grace Prep's Ellen Dixon fight for a rebound Friday at Concordia Lutheran High School. See more photos online at www.yourconroenews.com/photos.

Concordia Lutheran's Emily Brooks and Arlington Grace Prep's Ellen Dixon fight for a rebound Friday at Concordia Lutheran High School. See more photos online at www.yourconroenews.com/photos.

Photo: Karl Anderson

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Concordia Lutheran's Katelyn Holland steals the ball from Arlington Grace Prep's Rebekah Provines Friday at Concordia Lutheran High School. The Crusaders won the TAPPS Area Round playoff game 49-25 to advance to Saturday’s Regional round needing just one victory for a fifth consecutive trip to the TAPPS 4A state tournament. See more photos online at www.yourconroenews.com/photos. less

Concordia Lutheran's Katelyn Holland steals the ball from Arlington Grace Prep's Rebekah Provines Friday at Concordia Lutheran High School. The Crusaders won the TAPPS Area Round playoff game 49-25 to advance ... more

Photo: Karl Anderson

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Arlington Grace Prep's Megan Raborar guards Concordia Lutheran's Beth Thompson as she goes up for a basket Friday at Concordia Lutheran High School. See more photos online at www.yourconroenews.com/photos.

Arlington Grace Prep's Megan Raborar guards Concordia Lutheran's Beth Thompson as she goes up for a basket Friday at Concordia Lutheran High School. See more photos online at www.yourconroenews.com/photos.

Photo: Karl Anderson

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Concordia Lutheran girls use quick start roll on in TAPPS

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Looking for their third trip to the TAPPS 4A girls basketball state championshp game in five years, Tomball Concordia Lutheran took another step towards getting there Friday evening with a one-sided 49-24 home win over Arlington Grace Community in the Area Round of the state playoffs.

Denying Grace Community School not only points, but even shots, the Crusaders took a 13-0 lead after the first period and were up 16-0 before GCS made a free throw to light up their side of the scoreboard at the six-minute mark of the second quarter. That would be as close as they would get the rest of the way.

“Offensively, I thought we started kind of slow because they played zone (defense) against us and we struggle against that when we make shots,” Concordia Lutheran girls basketball coach Matt Neidigk said. “But defensively, we did a great job. Holding them to one point the first 10 minutes of the game got us over the slow offensive start and we preach to the girls that there’s going to be times that we need our defense to pick us because offensive isn’t always going to be there. But we can keep ourselves in a game with good defense and we played really good defense tonight.”

He said maybe the team hasn’t jumped out on people 16-0 when they’ve come into their gym, but the Crusaders have thrived in their friendly confines.

“At home this year, we’ve been really good,” Neidigk said. “So I was confident we’d play well from the start. I mean sometimes we’re a tale of two teams because we’ve had times this year where we’ve struggled on the road. But when we’re at home, we feel like we’re the favorite to win the game and so we want to come out and get our defense going with good pressure and try to use that to not only stop who we’re playing, but also to spark our offense because we want to get our transition game going and push the ball and get ourselves some easy baskets. We want to get out to a big as lead as we can so the people we’re playing will have a bigger mountain to climb to get back in it and I thought we were pretty successful with that.”

After the visitors were able to score, they began to do it with some regularity, but they still couldn’t stop the Crusaders as Neidigk played everyone on his team at least a few minutes.

Senior post Katelyn Holland and guard Emily Brooks led the Crusaders with 11 points apiece. Stephanie Ward had nine and Morgan Lochte eight for TCL, which improved to 24-13 with the win.

Guard Olivia Moharer kept the Grace Community School Cougars in the game, scoring a game-high 14 points.

The wins puts the Crusaders in the Regional tournament next Saturday in Fort Worth and with a win there they will be headed back to the 4A state tournament in Mansfield.